Posted by Marvin from l316t2p32.netway.at (195.96.17.32)on May 21, 1998 at 14:12:53:
Ok, in the last two weeks I had to work very
hard, so I had almost no time to finish the
BigRRed release (I promised to do so already
some weeks ago - sorry for the delay)....
But today I finished probably the last
step (for now) by having found a small and
annoying bug, and now currently I am compiling
the new readme-files for this release.
So expect a release of the current version
of BigRRed tomorrow or, at latest, during
the weekend....
The BigRRed release (I gave it the release
number 4.0) is a merge of original BigRRed
code, the Croc driver, additional inputs from
Chris and Jeff C, and MANY more changes
and enhancements (and much bugfixing and testing)
....Actually, the whole damned thing has leapt a
far way ahead, in my view....
I worked very hard on this thing over quite a few
weeks, and at least on the paper, the wrapper
now supports almost all Glide functionality and
almost all color and blending modes that should be
commonly used....
HOWEVER, despite all my efforts, with almost
every new game I tried, I had many new and
unforeseen problems, and especially with some
EA games I had absolutely no luck in getting
the games to work. So still don't expect too much
from the wrapper... But I would appreciate
if you all test it on as many games as possible
now...And I am confident that among all games
there will be at least some that will
run very satisfyingly, (or even amazingly?).
So I think the wrapper may have the potential
now to raise some amazement among Rendition
(and non-Rendition) folks... We will see...
During the development, I have tested a bunch
of popular and not-so-popular Glide games,
and I could roughly divide the games into three
categories:
o) PLAYABLE - Games that run and look quite ok:
Croc (sales version and demo) 99%
Ignition/Bleifuss Fun/Fun Tracks (sales version
only, demo is not 3dfx enhanced) 95%
VoodooLights screensaver 99%(?)
Descent Freespace (demo) 95%(?!)
Excalibur (demo) 90%(?)
Pandemonium II (demo) 80%
o) EXPERIMENTAL - Games that run somehow,
but still have severe visual problems or performance problems:
Barrage (demo/shareware)
Grand Prix Legends
F1 racing simulation
Total Soccer (demo)
o) FRUSTRATING - Games that decline to start,
although they should run quite ok from their
glide-usage (judged by their import-tables):
NHL98
NFSIIse
TUROK demo
The category FRUSTRATING was it really -
I tried almost everything possible to get them
running, but had no luck - the problem is always
the startup-phase of the games.....I believe that
these games would have no serious problems (at least
NHL98 and NFSIIse seem to use simple glide functions
only), once the would start....
So, you all could help me on the following problems:
o) First of all, I want to make this version
public on this developer forum. How can/should
I do this now? (we had this discussion before...)
One possibility would be to distribute the
thing over regular email: i.e. you all interested
in being beta-testers of the wrapper would mail
me (or Bjorn?) and I/Bjorn would send the wrapper
via email (the thing is rather small) to you...
Any other suggestions?
o) Everyone testing the wrapper should test it on
as many Glide games as possible. Reports about
the testing should be made public or at least should
be sent to me....
IMPORTANT: everyone testing the wrapper should
read the included READMEs carefully, because in order
to get a new (untested) game running, you can/must
change some very important wrapper-settings via an
INI file.... If you are unsure about anything or
if you encounter problems, please contact me!
o) I need testers which have both a V2200 and
a 3dfx card, for direct comparisons of visual
appearance and performance!!!
o) After some further bug-fixes, optimizations and
improvements, I want to make this thing really PUBLIC,
really soon (Release 4.1)... How should we distribute
the thing, finally?
The release of the wrapper will be a source-code
release, too, but only for BigRRed developers...
If you are really interested in the source code,
please mail me....
Please be patient a few days longer
Marvin